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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29821056">Broken Circle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder'>Wind_Ryder</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Death of minor characters, Different Order of Immortals, Drowning, Gen, Making of Ghost Story Legends, Mentions of lynchings, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Civil War, Racism, References to the KKK, The Old Guard Big Bang 2021, references to slavery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:55:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,594</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29821056</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of Booker dying in 1812, Nile dies in 1865. It's just after the civil war has ended, and the start of reconstruction. The United States is struggling to understand how to proceed, and the formation of racial extremist groups is on the rise.</p><p>After her death, Nile wakes and gives herself a purpose. She's not going to let reconstruction fail. The whispers of the KKK will end before they begin. And her new immortal family must choose to help her, or get out of her way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>146</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Old Guard Big Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Broken Circle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>WARNINGS: Please keep in mind the summary and tags. There are some uncomfortable moments in this fic. If you think there should be additional tags, please let me know and I'd be happy to add them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Nile was seven, her father told her a story of their people. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We came from across the ocean,” he said, holding her steady on his lap. He placed a cup to signify where America was, then a plate to show her Africa. A coin makes its way across the table from the plate to the cup. “They kept us in bondage, and they refused to let us go. They made us work in their fields. Until one day...one day we could be free.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are we free now?” Nile asked. She picks up the coin and turns it over and over in her hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>We </span>
  </em>
  <span>are...now, yes.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saved the master’s son from drowning. He freed me as a reward,” her father told her. He said it quietly, with his hands running up and down Nile’s arms, like he was trying to keep her warm. She wasn’t cold, but she liked the feeling of his hands on her arms. They were big and strong. Sometimes he tickled her tummy with those long fingers he had, and she didn’t like that. But here, with his strength at her back and his chin on her skull, she feels safe and cozy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t know you could swim,” her mother says from across the table. She looks troubled by something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t really, still don’t,” her father replies. He’s quiet, uncertain. “I saw the boy go in, and I just went to get him out. He was even younger than you when it happened, NIle.” He takes the coin from Nile’s hands. “The water’s important to us. A long time ago, some of our people didn’t want to be slaves. They didn’t want to be in bondage. They went to the ocean and they drowned. Death...death was better than not being free. That’s what the water does. Do you understand?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile isn’t sure she does, but she nods anyway. Her father gives her that coin and she holds onto it for almost a full year before she sees a good cake that she really wants to buy at the market. She’s just about to spend it too, when she thinks of the boat. The boat and death and water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She ends up crying in the market, though she can’t explain what happened when her mother asks. She just keeps crying and crying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders what it means to really be free. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>It all comes to a head in Pulaski, Tennessee. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s been following the leads of a rumor for months now. A rumor that makes her skin itch and her stomach turn. She spends her nights in the homes of quiet and nervous folk who shutter their windows at night and hide their lights. “We don’t want no trouble from anyone,” the quiet and nervous folk tell her as they scoop some more soup from their shared pot and give it to her to eat. It’s more than she deserves, already taking up space on their floor, but no one accepts her protests. So she eats with them, treats with them, and she feels safe by their hearth. She dreams about people that she can’t understand. Two men, a white one and a brown one, and a white woman who wears men’s clothing. Sometimes, she hears them speak. They say </span>
  <em>
    <span>We’ll find you, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Nile doesn’t know if it’s a threat or a promise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know if she wants them to find her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But eventually, they do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In Pulaski, Tennessee, Nile leaves the home of people who all share her last name now. Freeman. They’re all free men. They are her brothers and sisters in all things, even if she cannot know their life. Cannot understand their lives. Her father had been freed long before she was born. Her mother’s mother before that. Her parents wed in Chicago, and neither Nile or her brother knew what it was like to </span>
  <em>
    <span>serve. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Nile could see it though. She could feel it. Generations of pain and violence wrap through her in the evenings as she stays with these relatives who have finally been granted a chance they’d never had before. A chance they fought, bled, and died for. A chance that some people are trying to take away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile steps out of the home, and there, waiting for her just across the road, are three people she’s only known in her dreams. She hesitates as she spies them, their world weary expressions, their open looks of contentment. They look pleased to see her, and she hasn’t been pleased to see anyone in so very long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nile,” the white man says. He steps towards her and holds out his hand. She looks at it, and looks at him. Sometime before she’d been murdered, she would have blushed. She’d have been embarrassed, to feel the weight of this man’s eyes on her. The way he smiled and stood seemed far too expressive for a first meeting. He’s too forward, too brash. She thinks that her mother would have tutted at his behavior even as her father would have been intrigued that such a man (so dignified in his bearing) would offer his hand for Nile to take. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile does take the hand. She has been raised to have good manners. She takes the hand and she shakes it. His palm is warm against hers. His fingers are tight, but do not tempt the idea of restraint. It’s only when she goes to remove her hand from his grasp does he hold on just a moment longer. He uses his other hand to clasp theirs together. He brings their tangled grip to his lips. He kisses the knuckles of her fingers. “It’s very nice to meet you, little sister,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roughly, she pulls her hand away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has met many people since she started traveling. She has seen many faces. She has heard them call her many things. She has been called sister many times. But with them, she always knew why. Their people were always related. Sharing a bond that cannot ever be severed, and a memory that can never die. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not your sister,” she tells the white man who walks with dignity and a countenance that does not show the years of torment that haunt those she calls family. Her eyes flick toward the other two. The woman-dressed-as-a-man sighs long and slow. The other, the brown skinned man who maybe, possibly, could be like her, reaches for the white fool’s shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nicolo,” he says, not looking at the white man at all. He’s looking at Nile, smiling a friendly smile that hides teeth Nile is sure can bite. “He’s been looking forward to meeting you. Forgive him for being too hasty. My name is Yusuf, may we speak?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile shrugs. She’s not sure if she wants to speak with them or not, but she supposes that she has to. The dreams meant something. She wants to know what. Then, if they have an answer for her, after that, she will go her own way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is something she needs to do. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The first man Nile kills is a white boy of maybe twenty-three. She doesn’t regret killing him. Nor does she regret killing his brother, his father, or his cousin. She regrets killing his mother, but only because the mother looked at her and wept. She wept and asked Nile: “Why, why, why would you do this?” and Nile hesitated just before she killed that shaking, sobbing, grieving woman. She hesitated until her mind summoned up an image of everyone that would come looking now that Nile had killed most of the family. She hesitated and then recalled how when the white boy of maybe twenty-three had beaten Nile to death with just two days earlier, and how the white boy of maybe twenty-three’s mother had told him to make sure no one found Nile’s body. Maybe she’d been afraid of what would happen. Maybe she’d been afraid of the law coming down on them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. The law </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>come down. It’s come down in the form of justice. And maybe the mother hadn’t really been involved, and she hadn’t really needed to die, but she’d raised that white boy of maybe twenty-three, and that boy had chosen to kill Nile because she’d dared to say ‘no’ in a way he’d found insulting. That mother should have done better for her son. That mother shouldn’t be wearing the necklace </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nile’s father </span>
  </em>
  <span>gave to </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nile’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>mother on their twentieth anniversary. So Nile kills her, takes the single pearl and sea-shell necklace back, sets the house alight, and walks away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been two days since Nile woke up in a shallow grave. Her mother and brother’s bodies had been laid out right next to hers. Their house that her father had built with his own two hands had been burned to nothing. Nile still has blood on her skin and her clothes from what they did to her. She stood out and she looked at the remains of her vengeance. It’s not enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She walks south. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know where she’s going at first, but she knows she can’t go home. She walks until she can’t walk anymore, avoiding roads and anyplace anyone can see her. She finds a hollow in a tree to sleep in. Her head rests on the bark. A spider crawls across her arm but she’s too exhausted to care. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she closes her eyes she dreams of people. Men and a woman. Then, then she dreams of something else. Water, and screaming beneath the waves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Water makes you free, her father said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Death before bondage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wakes up screaming, then has to run because someone heard her and a dog’s been set loose. She runs as hard and as fast as she can, tears streaming down her face as she gasps for air. She falls to her knees at the side of a creek and she slaps her filthy palms into the water. She begs for an answer as to who and what she is, but the rippling reflection under the pale moonlight doesn’t say a word. It stares back at her as if to ask: don’t you already know? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she doesn’t. And she’s lost. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Their names are Nicolo, Yusuf, and Andromache. They’re immortal; it’s not just her. She asks them if they’ve ever dug themselves out of their own graves, and they all say yes. It’s happened from time to time. “It’s not a great deal of fun, is it?” Yusuf asks. She almost wants to know what he considers a great deal of fun. She doesn’t ask. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yusuf is easier to talk to than the others. Nicolo retains that calm, dignified, and almost picturesque solemn politeness that strikes Nile’s eye as false. She doesn’t trust that serenity, nor his solemnity. He bows his head to her, pulls her chair out before she sits, and treats her like any white man would treat his woman. She is not his woman, and has no intentions of becoming his woman. He treats her like that anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache is something different, though. She’s a bird trapped in a cage with the house on fire around her. She sits at the bottom of the cage, watching the smoke rise. She doesn’t bat her wings against the bars, nor scream a song desperate for attention. She sits and she waits, and she stares out into the flames, wholly expecting them to consume her, and does nothing. She’s terrifying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s one more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Her name is Quynh,” Nicolo explains. Earnest and gentle. He explains the nightmare of drowning that never made sense to Nile. The water has always meant freedom, but those dreams...those dreams had been an eternity of suffering and she’d hated it. Hated how it felt. Hated how it made her want to just rage and rage and rage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She rages too much during the day lately. She doesn’t want to rage at night too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They tell her what happened to Quynh and Nile squeezes her hands together as she listens. Her fingernails dig into her palms. Her heart pounds brutally in her chest. A hammer beating against her ribs from the inside. She wants to dive into those depths and find this woman that had been so callously tossed aside. She wants to pull her to the surface. Give her the freedom she was always meant to have. She wants to breathe air into her lungs and let her see the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How could you stop looking for her?” she asks. Andromache walks away without saying a word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile considers how she feels about that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t feel anything. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The rumor started like this: in Pulaski, Tennessee the dead Confederate Soldiers were rising from their grave and terrorizing the freemen. They’d chase her people late at night. They’d slam their wicked hands against the doors and windows and frames. They’d let loose the penned animals. They’d set fire to crops. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As someone who had recently dug herself from her grave and lit fire to the home of those who wronged her, Nile sensed a certain bit of irony in the rumor. She also sensed more than a bit of foul play. If it was normal for people to rise from their grave, she imagined more people would have done it before. But she’s the first she’s heard of, and no matter what she’s done so far - she can’t seem to return to the peaceful slumber of death that she’d reached before she woke up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father was still buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on a battlefield that historians were already starting to analyze, and her mother and brother were still right where she’d left them. Two stick crosses marking their plot next to the burned remains of a home she’d thought was a palace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile walked to Pulaski and she stayed with the families who would let her in. She listened to their stories. She walked their graveyards and their fields. She played at being the ghost that the people here thought existed, and what she saw was something that she’d come to expect whenever she heard rumors like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was the only one who cheated death. The rest of these people? They’re angry boys laughing at a joke they think is funny. They’re playing pranks on the people of Pulaski, and Nile hates everything about them. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“Your side won the war,” Andromache tells her quietly. “There’s no need to keep fighting this.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>know of the war?” Nile spat, hateful and mean. She’s lost everything, </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and now she’ll live forever knowing just what she lost. She’ll live forever, and here’s this woman who doesn’t care about anyone at all telling her to let it go. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We fought in it,” Andromache says. “We joined the battles. We served. We helped you win.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you?” Nile stands up. Nicolo and Yusuf startle from where they’ve been hunched over their stew pot whispering to it like they had magic to make it good. They stare at her, wary and uncertain. Nile points out the window to where the sun is falling. Soon, the ghoulish boys in their ridiculous uniforms and their mud smeared faces will emerge from the shadows. Soon, they’ll come to bang on the windows and walls of a building they think is full of unsuspecting black families. They’ll ooooh and ahhh in the windows and they’ll think they’re terrifying everyone inside. Then they think they’ll slink back to their own homes, laughing at the mess they’ve caused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile won’t let them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The war isn’t over,” Nile says. “The battlefields are gone. Sure. All the soldiers are going home and some generals signed some papers. But Mr. Lincoln was killed and that means sure as anything the war’s not over.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This war wasn’t being fought over slavery,” Andromache says. “It—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“—Maybe for you it wasn’t. Maybe for Mr. Lincoln too, who am I to say? But it was about slavery for me. It was about slavery for my father, and my brother, and my mother. It was about slavery for every single person who looked like me, who talked like me, who lived like me. It was about slavery to all of us who were told we’re no longer slaves anymore, and it’ll be about slavery for all of us who come after too. This war isn’t over, and it won’t ever </span>
  <em>
    <span>be </span>
  </em>
  <span>over until there isn’t a single person left in this country who looks at someone like me and thinks they’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>better </span>
  </em>
  <span>just because they look the way they do. This war won’t be over until people like </span>
  <em>
    <span>them,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she points fiercely at the window one more time, “can’t get away with doing things like </span>
  <em>
    <span>this. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Until people like </span>
  <em>
    <span>them...don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> do things like this. Then, </span>
  <em>
    <span>then, </span>
  </em>
  <span>when the last baby can lay their head on their mama’s chest and not be afraid to close their eyes and go to sleep...then the war will be over. But it won’t be over until then. Not for me, and not for anyone else in this country.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache is quiet for a long time. Beside them, Nicolo stirs their stew. “She’s right Andy,” Nicolo murmurs. Nile feels no satisfaction in his approval. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not all wars are fought on battlefields,” Yusuf adds on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache sighs. She nods her head. She turns toward the window. “All right. We’ll help you win this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not entirely what Nile had been expecting, but even so, she’s not so far gone that she doesn’t feel the flame of gratitude spark to life in her chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the first thing that’s felt good since the day she died. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it’s a start. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>In the weeks after she killed her murderer, Nile holds onto her mother’s necklace like it’s a gateway to heaven. She squeezed it with battered hands and her knees pulled up to her chest. She cried bitterly in the woods of Kentucky trying to figure out what she’ was going to do and where she’s going to go. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thought, foolishly, about Isabella and Jane. They lived on opposite sides of her house, and she can’t remember if she heard them in all the ruckus before she died. The whole night of her death blurs a bit after the first hit in the head. She remembered Jane and her walking arm and arm back from the river. She remembered how they’d been skipping rocks and standing ankle high in the water, searching for crawdaddies while Isabella read them a letter from Thomas Moore. Nile remembered sighing and swooning over Thomas Moore’s name, giggling with Jane as they made up new lines for Isabella’s letter that are progressively more ostentatious. Isabella flushed and called them terrible friends. She stomped off to read her letter in peace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone tugged on Nile’s hair. Jane screamed and ran for help. Nile called out for someone, anyone. She remembered her brother. Then her mother. Then there were other people. Then she didn’t remember much of anything, except pain and blood and violence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, Nile hopes Isabella and Thomas do get married. She feels bad that the last thing she did was tease Isabella about her beau. She deserved better than that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all did. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“The attacks started as </span>
  <em>
    <span>pranks</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Nile hisses as she shows the three immortals claiming to be her new family her research. Nile didn’t feel comfortable letting them stay with the freedmen who had offered </span>
  <em>
    <span>her </span>
  </em>
  <span>lodging. Nicolo had readily offered a rented room at an inn. Nile followed him, Andromache, and Yusuf a few steps behind. She watched as Nicolo and Andromache charm the proprietor, as Yusuf and slips up the stairs to the rooms while Nicolo seems to put on a show. She seethes as she realized that Yusuf played the game that she’s known all her life. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. When the others came, he asked her about her mission and she tumbles into it so to avoid talking about what she’d seen instead. What he knows, instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache leans to look at the book that Nile has been collecting newspaper clippings and notes in. Nile’s been careful when she talks to the people who’ve been attacked. She keeps their names from her records. She uses a kind of shorthand that her mother taught her a long time ago. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sometimes you need to hide what you know, </span>
  </em>
  <span>her mother said. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sometimes that makes things easier. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Her mother hadn’t been freed from slavery because she saved a white man’s son from drowning. Her grandmother had been the one to run away from the tobacco fields, crossing cotton plantations, creeks, and rivers, sleeping in trees and following a story that had been woven into her hair. Each row was a step in the journey to freedom, and her grandmother had dug her nails into the earth and claimed it for herself. Messages and codes made up the fabric of Nile’s life. She never forgot that lesson, just like she never forgot the way water meant freedom—even if that freedom meant death. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ancient woman who claims she’s been alive since before slaves first came to America, reads Nile’s codes as if she wrote them herself. She frowns for a moment, squints just a bit, and sticks the peak of her tongue into the corner of her mouth. Then Andromache leans forward and nods slowly. She traces the papers with her fingertip, reading and translating, or pretending to read and translate, all as Nile explains the </span>
  <em>
    <span>game </span>
  </em>
  <span>that led her to Tennessee. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The pranks started escalating though. Beatings started. Land’s been salted and burned. There are figures, figures all in white and chanting hatred the whole time.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache turns to the most important page in Nile’s notebook. The page where she’s written down the names of the people she’s tracked. It has taken her the better part of a year to get this far, but Nile’s worked hard to figure it out. She’s died more than once to find these names, to learn who they are. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes, the men who killed her make the mistake of stealing her necklace when it takes Nile just a little too long to wake up. They talk to themselves like they have earned her mother’s pearl. As if their blood stained fingers have any business being near her father’s love. She killed them when she woke. She returned the necklace so it rests perfectly in the dip of her collarbones. She keeps working, because that’s the only thing Nile has had to encourage her since she first died all that time ago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yusuf leans over Andromache’s shoulder, but when he sees the scribbles of Nile’s notes he frowns and looks away. He looks toward Nicolo on Andromache’s other side. They share some kind of wordless communication that Nile doesn’t care to decipher. She doesn’t trust any of them. She can’t. Not yet. She tells them anyway. What could they do to her? “They </span>
  <em>
    <span>formed </span>
  </em>
  <span>their little group in Judge Thomas Jones’ office. John Lester, James Crowe, John Kennedy, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Calvin</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jones, Richard Reed, and Frank McCord. They call themselves the KKK. Ku Klux Klan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache makes a noise under her breath. Her nostrils flare as she snorts and shoves the notebook back towards Nile. Nile takes it, settles all the pages even though nothing’s been disturbed. “It’s a farce of greek and celtic,” Andromache says growling out the words. “Circle. The Circle Clan. Purity shit.” She glances toward Nicolo who winces and closes his eyes like he’s done something to be ashamed of. Nile wouldn’t be surprised. There are few things white men do that aren’t shameful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something to add?” she asks. She wants to know exactly who these people are and what they’re going to add to her mission. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nicolo opens his mouth. He closes it again. He glances toward Yusuf who shakes his head ever so slightly. Nicolo shoves his hands into his pockets and mutters something in a language that Nile doesn’t recognize and can’t understand. Anger flares inside her as she watches him squirm. She squeezes her hands into fists. She watches as he stares at her notebook with fierce intensity. Whatever it is he hadn’t said, sits there on his face anyway. The shame has tipped into something more. Something perverse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s guilty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wants to ask him what he has to be guilty of, but she never gets the chance. Yusuf steps forward and the motion is so sudden it snaps Nile’s focus to him instead. “Have you heard of the Pale Faces?” Yusuf asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” she replies. She’d seen their work in the north. “They’re not directly part of </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>group, but they’re the same. They’re...united.” All of them under the same badge and banner. Maleficence against people who just want to live their lives, whose only crime had been to want to live. The question comes too close on the edge of her suspicion, her uncertainty. She snaps her gaze back to Nicolo. “Friends of yours?” she asks. He winces and the guilt shifts to something she cannot identify. Something she doesn’t want to identify. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile knows she’s not giving him a fair chance. She knows that her anger is not to Nicolo exactly, but she can’t help it. She’s spent two years mired by the hell of humanity. Two years being murdered by men who look just like Nicolo. Two years watching families suffer, after a lifetime of struggling to make things work. Legally, nothing has ever worked in her favor. Her father fought and died in a war meant to help their people become free, and even after he’d won that war he lost his life in: his family had been killed just because some white boys knew they could get away with it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile doesn’t have it in her to trust blindly anymore. Especially not to people who look like Nicolo. “I would not be friends with people like them,” he says, choosing his words carefully. He speaks slowly, his accent falling into place where Yusuf’s vanishes. Nicolo meets Nile’s eyes. The joy he’d had when he’d first kissed her hands, that quiet dignity, seems so fragile and uncertain now. “I know better than to believe what they believe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are words missing from his proclamation. She asks him, “You know better </span>
  <em>
    <span>now?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And she supposes that she’s grateful when he bows his head just for a moment. He bows his head, then meets her eyes. There are tears there. “I know better now,” he agrees. She nods curtly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s your plan?” Andromache asks. So Nile tells them about setting up these members of the KKK, waiting for them to attack a cabin she </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows </span>
  </em>
  <span>they’ve been staking out and causing trouble at. They agree to relocate there, and they agree to help her tonight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not just tonight,” Nile tells them. Andromache hesitates. She looks to the others. “I’m not stopping this until it’s finished.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Until what’s finished, exactly, Nile?” Andromache asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That Andromache asks means that she doesn’t understand. So Nile doesn’t feel the need to answer. She holds up her book and glares at Andromache until Andromache sighs and says something that Nile doesn’t understand. Androamche doesn’t seem to realize that each time she does that is one time more that she’s proven Nile can’t trust her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s going to take them a long time to make things better if this keeps up. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Fifteen years after they met for the first time, Nile finds Nicolo sitting at a river bank. His bare feet are cooling in the water. Mosquitos are buzzing all about him, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s watching Yusuf wading deep into the river, shirt off and trousers rolled up to his knees. Yusuf’s fishing with his hands, and Nicolo watches him with the rapt kind of attention he’s always maintained whenever Nile cares to notice just how rapt it is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you see when you look at him?” Nile asks. She doesn’t know why she asks. She’s observed so much of both Yusuf and Nicolo that she thinks she has a very good idea of what the answer is. Yusuf, if he’s had a few too many glasses of wine, tells Nile all the lovely things about Nicolo that he can manage. He sees a world of beauty, enraptured by sunlight and color. Nile had thought that she could find symmetry in Yusuf for years. That he would be the one who would understand her the most. His were a persecuted people, and she felt that perhaps it was something they could bond over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s surprised herself by realizing that while their persecutions may be similar, their reactions differ greatly. Yusuf reaches into the river and catches his fish with laughter. He tosses them to shore where they flop themselves to and fro. Sometimes Nicolo shuffles them into a basket for dinner. Other times he watches them only to make sure the fish doesn’t get back to the water. Yusuf has never been the fish caught on the shoreline, trying to make the best of the last few moments of his life. Perhaps he had been, once, but Nile thinks it’s more apt to say that he’s just the river. Always moving forward, always embracing the changing lands and scenery and environs that its water contains, and always reaching for the ocean with all its unknowable depths and secrecies. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are things she can find in Yusuf that she knows Yusuf understands the same as her, but she has had to deny that much of her relates more with Nicolo than she’d like. She still shies from his general companionship in a way that she knows hurts him. She’s not sure when she’ll be able to accept him as </span>
  <em>
    <span>different </span>
  </em>
  <span>from those that have done her harm, mainly because she’s not so sure he won’t eventually </span>
  <em>
    <span>become </span>
  </em>
  <span>someone who will do her harm. He has so many options at his fingertips, and she knows him well enough to know that he is more ruthless than any of them combined. Even Andromache. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nicolo is that ocean that Yusuf longs for. Vast and unknowing, ruthless and vicious. He is the promise of freedom offered on the bladepoint of death. He looks at Nile and he does not pretend to smile or to be anything other than he is. She has seen him do the most horrible things when what he wants is threatened. And what he wants is only ever one thing: to live in a world at Yusuf’s side in whatever way Yusuf wants him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks it’s incredibly sad. She doesn’t think that’s how Yusuf perceives their relationship at all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When I look at Yusuf, I see all the beauty that I do not have,” Nicolo tells her. “What do you see when you look at him?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone who doesn’t realize just how fortunate he is.” Her response startles Nicolo. He turns fully to face her. His lips fall open. His eyes, ocean green under a stormy sky, blink at her with unabashed surprise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night before, Nile had watched Nicolo murder twenty-five people with his barehands while his clothes burned off his body and Yusuf lay gasping for breath next to a smoky pile of burning crosses. Their missions were clear cut and always brutal. When they stepped in, when they found a group that needed erasing, they were erased thoroughly and permanently. No survivors and no witnesses. No one to see what happened. The morning would rise and the bleak ruinous existence of those who dared to preach for the death of Nile’s people would lay in the warped remains of their games as if the hand of God had come to smite them from the earth. Last night, Nile had watched Nicolo serve as God’s hand. She’d seen him eliminate the last vestiges of the filth who dared to claim that segregation and free-but-not-equal were terms that should continue to rule the South. She’d watched him places his palms upon a burning cross and spear a man who had dared to attempt to send a message by hanging Yusuf and Nile from a tree. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile and Yusuf had been too weak to help the fight and Andromache had barely been able to get a blade in edgewise by the time Nicolo had stepped into the scene. She’d been relegated to making sure no one ran off and no one witnessed what happened at the tree. Nicolo had ended all that remained of the horrors that had haunted Jackson, Mississippi. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now he sat, unblemished and unharmed, watching Yusuf fish in the river. Or at least he was, until he started staring at Nile as if he’d never seen her before in his life. She huffs at his attention. “He’s fortunate to have you,” Nile concedes. It’s taken her a long time to rationalize the story of their meeting, to come to terms with what that look of guilt had meant the first day Nicolo and she had met. The face of a man who followed the wrong path, against the wrong enemy, and realized the beauty within — but only after he’d committed atrocities he never should have earned forgiveness for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Nicolo murmurs. She suspects he knows just how difficult it was for her to say it to him. She needs more time, more time on her own to truly understand what and who Nicolo is. She trusts that Nicolo will always protect Yusuf. Herself? She’s not sure of. But she knows the depths he would go for Yusuf, and that’s a start. That’s something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes his hand in hers. She kisses his knuckles. “You should rest, brother,” she tells him. She can’t bare to say any more and she’s glad when he lets her leave without another word or an attempt to hold her back. She needs time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He always gives it to her. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The windows and the doors shudder on the cabin that Nile’s prepared. She takes up the stake that she’s whittled from a branch in the woods and she throws open the door. A boy in a confederate uniform stands before her, covered in mud and ooooohing like a beast. “I know who you are,” she tells him. “I’m not afraid of you.” The boy startles. Blanches. He thinks he’s being funny. He isn’t one of the names on her book and she doesn’t care. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He starts walking towards her and the windows are pounded on harder. She steps right into his space and puts her hand on his chest. She gives him a firm shove and he stumbles backwards. He’s a ghost tripping over his own feet and it’s humorous when he tumbles to the ground. She stands over him in the firelight of the cabin. “Leave now. You’re trespassing.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If they’d left, it would have been over and done with. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the boy’s been embarrassed. The boy saw her, a young black woman seemingly home alone, and thought he could frighten her. That he’s been given a talking to like a scolded brat makes something go funny in his head. He’s not willing to look like a fool in front of his friends, some of whom see him lying there and have started to chuckle. So the boy grabs the bayonet blade that he’s got tucked into his belt and he hollers bloody-murder as he runs forward and stabs her in the heart. “What are you going to do now you—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile’s gotten used to this by now. She’s used to dying and waking up. She’s used to feeling the way her body groans and moans. The blade is still in her chest but he’s removing it and even as he does her heart is starting to heal. She wills her hands into movement and she snatches his arm as he pulls it back. “I’ll kill you, that’s what I’m going to do,” she tells him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The blood drains from his face and he screeches in horror. His friends abandon him, shouting about the dead coming back to life. Nile takes the bayonet and she holds onto the squirming speckled faced child who thought he’d be more of a man if he killed a black woman who refused to back down. He passes out before she can kill him, and that’s better anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yusuf steps out of the shadows from where he and the others had been watching and waiting this whole time. Andromache is displeased by her tactics, but Nile explains even as she starts maneuvering the boy’s body so its easier to move. “I can’t kill every bigot in the south,” she says. “They need to be scared all on their own.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a good idea spreading word that there’s an immortal—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“—I’m not immortal to them,” Nile whispers. She looked Andromache straight in the eye. </span>
  <span>“I’m a ghost.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the morning, those boys will come back and spy on the house they’d try to assault. Inside, there will be the house’s normal occupants going about their days. The freedmen will be kind and polite and the boys will think it’s all just a dirty trick. But when they try to attack a different house the next night, Nile is there. The ghost that never dies. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The waking reminder of all these people’s pain. She will die a thousand times in their name, if it means that they live in peace and those that dare to harm them are too afraid to try. And when the horribles of the town </span>
  <em>
    <span>dare </span>
  </em>
  <span>to do more than bang on windows and let the cattle go in the night, Nile is there to lay their bodies down bloody and broken. To remind them that there is something worse in the world than a white man who thinks he’s better than everyone else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Justice comes for those who walk her fields. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she fully intends to break the circle of despair that’s kept her people’s heads down low. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Andromache’s always been something of an enigma to Nile. Sometimes she’s blank and unexpressive, other times she’s angry and vengeful. She calls Nicolo and Yusuf her “boys” and Nile wrinkles her nose at the phrase. “They’re grown men,” she snaps once, early on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache tilts her head and examines Nile with open interest. “They’ve been my boys for seven hundred years, Nile,” Andromache says. She says it like Nile’s mother used to say things. Calm and slow, sighing just a bit like the answer is obvious and doesn’t need to be spelled out. Perhaps a touch of irritation, but more than a little good humor. “I’ve raised them. They’re mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Niel frowns at the idea. She looks to where Yusuf and Nicolo are, both of them looking to Andromache like she’s the moon that hangs in the sky. They wait for her every command, every word. They follow without question. Yes, Nile supposes there </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>something oddly maternal about the way Andromache interacts with them. The way she sees Andromache draw up a blanket when Nicolo is sleeping, or touches Yusuf’s arm in the mornings as a way to say hello. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is, also, something else that reminds Nile of her mother. Something that she hadn’t realized until Andromache spoke just now. Andromache moves as if she’s waiting for the world to end. Waiting for death to finally claim her and have it be done with. She knows it’s not her time, she knows she needs to work hard and be there for her family, but she’s yearning for someone who isn’t with them anymore and it fractures her in ways that Nile hadn’t expected to see. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quynh is still lost under the water, far away from all of them, and Andromache reminds Nile of her mother once they realized that her father wasn’t coming home ever again. “I won’t be your child too,” Nile tells Andromache as kindly as she can manage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache seems oddly startled by the comment, as though she hadn’t expected it. “You’ve already decided what you want in your life,” Andromache says. “I have nothing I can teach you, except how to reach those goals faster.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did you need to teach them?” Nile asks, curious but uncertain if she really wants to know. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How to live,” Nicolo answers. “It is what any good mother should teach their young.” He leans forward and kisses Andromache on her cheek. She rolls her eyes toward the sky and she nudges his shoulder. Soft and indulgent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes. There it is. A mother’s smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile hadn’t thought she’d see it so close again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It burns so hot against her skin, that she almost melts into an embrace that has not yet been offered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows if she reached for one, it would be given. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she’s not ready yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But soon. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Nile half thinks that Andromache </span>
  <em>
    <span>enjoys </span>
  </em>
  <span>terrorizing the people they hunt. She’s shown Nile how to make snapping bombs out of some powder and fire. They don’t do any damage but the cracks are loud and smoke pops from the top. She knows all kinds of strange and eerie signs to carve places that no one can read or understand, but have left a general air of terror amongst the white population even as the black population comes to see them as comforting and assuring. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nicolo mentions on a rainy morning three weeks in that he has started to see some of the white houses carving similar signs on their doorways. As if warding off evil spirits and marking their allegiance with the black community at the same time. Nile grins savagely, and keeps an ear to the ground for the movements of the founding Klansmen and their purposes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache points to one of the newest names in Nile’s book. Someone that the other founders want to promote for the purposes of unifying like-minded folks outside of Tennessee and beyond. “Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest...I’ve seen him. We fought against each other on the battlefield once. He likes a good drink...from what I recall.” She gives Nile an assessing look, and Nile considers their options. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Forrest is coming to Nashville within the next coming days to discuss his role in the Klan. He and most of the prominent members were all going to be there. They were going to swear themselves in, and then...something. “Where are they meeting...exactly?” Yusuf asks as he leans in close to see the notes that they’ve been working on. He’s started becoming able to decipher Nile’s code. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s not sure how she feels about it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They said someplace called the Maxwell House, I think,” Nile replies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mostly built by slave labor, as I recall,” Nicolo says from across the room. He’s looking out the window, down to the street below. He seems oddly thoughtful for once. As if he’s formulating a plan instead of letting the rest of them make the decisions and let him follow behind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile hesitates, frowns at him, then asks: “How do you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“After Nashville fell to the Union, it was used as an army barracks for a while,” Andromache replies. She’s starting to get that thoughtful look too. “What are you thinking, Nicky?” Nile scrunches her nose at the diminutive. It isn’t used often, but it sounds so unbearably childish that Nile’s not sure she’d appreciate it if it was. She prefers ‘Nicolo’ — it’s foreign and sets a barrier between them.  She doesn’t want to close any barriers between them. She wants them solid and firm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A staircase collapsed when we were there during the war,” he explains. He must be talking to Nile, but he’s not looking at her. Instead, he’s keeping his eyes on the road outside. As if he’s imagining the staircase shattering right before his eyes. “We died on it, but some of the people there...they saw us emerge from the rubble. They said we were ghosts. They say the hotel is now haunted.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Haunted,” Nile repeats slowly. She turns toward Andromache. “You’ve done the ghost thing before?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not on purpose, not like what you do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you’ve </span>
  <em>
    <span>done </span>
  </em>
  <span>it?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We try not to,” Nicolo interjects. “Knowing that we do not die...it is a dangerous thing, to play with people’s expectations.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because of Quynh?” Because someone knew, thought her a witch, and threw her into the sea. Nicolo nods. Andromache’s lips tighten and she crosses her arms firmly across her chest. Something awful starts to build in Nile’s stomach. “Why have you let me do this then?” Nile asks. “Let me risk Quynh’s fate?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andromache’s hand slams to the table. She stands up, violent and angry. Nile stands up too, refusing to be cowed. She wont tremble in fear or back down. She will meet violence with violence. She tilts her chin up, waiting for the conflict. Instead, Andromache says “I will </span>
  <em>
    <span>never </span>
  </em>
  <span>let that happen to you. To </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>of you.” She says it so fiercely, that Nile is shocked into accepting it as fact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She will never have to doubt Andromache’s conviction. Andromache’s will is too strong. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>It’s snowing in the Swiss Alps, well over one hundred years after Nile was first born, when she and her family wake violently after a dream of a French man getting shot in the chest while </span>
  <em>
    <span>stealing. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Nile heaves huge breaths into the bottom of her lungs, trying to stop the sharp spinning of her head that echoes the man’s tumble down a staircase that broke his neck unnecessarily after he’d been shot. She rubs at her throat in sympathy even as she side-eyes Nicky and Joe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joe’s sketching the man’s face and Nicky as blinking dreamily out somewhere in the middle distance with that look he gets whenever he’s so charmed and pleased by something. He looks utterly dopey and ridiculous and Nile wants to tell him he shouldn’t seem so at peace with the idea of </span>
  <em>
    <span>another </span>
  </em>
  <span>little sibling. “He’s probably not going to be as much fun as I was,” Nile tells him even as Nicky chitters about architecture and style and Joe draws mezzanines and the French man’s sad eyes staring blankly toward the ceiling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andy snorts as she enters their room, already wielding coffee like the gift to humanity she really is. “No one is going to be as much fun as you were, Nile,” Andy says. She passes out coffee, threading her fingers through Nicky’s hair in an absent way. Petting a cat that’s come to rub against a leg, purring in delight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, a fifteen year horror-story murder and haunting spree re-shaping a country’s entire political and social structure does seem like a high bar for anyone to meet,” Joe muses tacitly. He tears off the page of the sketch he’s been working on. He shows it to Nicky first because he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>such a soft-hearted fool that he gets starry eyed whenever Nicky approves of his art. It’s almost immediately passed over to Andromache for approval, then Nile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The French man looks just as startled to have died as Nile imagines anyone is during their first death. “Poor bastard,” she murmurs to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a strange feeling, but she’s already wishing him well. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Nile sees both Isabella and Jane by accident. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s in a restaurant with Yusuf. They’re being served by a white waiter who takes their order with a smile and hurries off to fetch their drinks. It’s 1901 and Nile had no plans for the day. She just wanted to rest, relax, feel good. Yusuf suggested the restaurant and she’d agreed without a second thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The patrons are a mix of everyone. Conversation is low and respectable, the occasional laugh filling the space. The ambient noise of cutlery against dishware is pleasant to the ear. Nile can smell the stew being eaten one table over and she’s transported back to fifty years prior, when she sat in her mother’s kitchen and watched her cook. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile isn’t paying much attention to the people around them. The setting is peaceful and calm. They haven’t needed to do any missions in ages, and she knows Andromache has been thinking about moving their group elsewhere. To where they can do more good. She half expects Yusuf to mention it during their lunch, but he doesn’t. He just chats about the flowers and some old memory he’s modifying for public ears. She’s so at peace with their current situation, that she startles when a hand grabs her arm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She flinches and Yusuf cuts off immediately. They both turn to look at the elderly woman standing at their side. She’d moved so swiftly that neither of them had a chance to react. But this woman is there, now, and she’s holding onto Nile’s arm with desperation. “Nile?” the woman asks, and Nile doesn’t recognize the voice. How could she? But there’s something in that wrinkled expression that sparks a memory she’d thought she’d forgotten. The name is on the tip of her tongue. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Isabella</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but she squashes it down before her traitorous lips can speak. Nile is still twenty-four years old to Isabella’s eyes. Nile, to Isabella, died a long long time ago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?” Nile asks instead, affecting an Louisiana accent that has no business in her mouth. She’s grateful, suddenly, that she’s not been speaking much today. That she’s let Yusuf regale her with memories as she laughed and nodded and encouraged him with a twitch of her brows or a quirk of her lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s grateful too, that her mother’s necklace is hidden under the collar of her blouse. That her hair is a modern fashion. That her clothes are a far cry better than what she’d ever been able to afford back in Chicago, 1865. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of these thoughts traverse Nile’s mind so quickly, that they soon slip to other thoughts. Other observations. Other things that she’d never thought she’d have a chance to experience. Isabella’s wearing a wedding band. Her clothes are nice and well maintained. Her hair is proper and orderly. Her face is filled with desperate longing, but it’s a good face with wrinkles deep right where Nile remembers laugh lines used to be on Isabella’s clean and perfect expression. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A second person approaches. Just as old, just as orderly, just as beautiful and filled with an aged longing. Jane has fewer wrinkles than Isabella. They’d always teased her that she’d look twenty when she was fifty, and fifty when she was one-hundred. Her hair is contained in a severe bun at the back of her neck. Twisting all the locks into place with the methodical precision that she’s always had. There’s a scar on her hand and one of her fingers looks a little bit shorter than it should be. Nile longs to ask what happened, and how, but she can’t quite fathom how she’s meant to handle this situation. She hasn’t even looked to Yusuf for help. Instead, she’s let herself be caught in the past. She doesn’t even know if she wants to leave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nile….you...you look. She looks just like Nile, doesn’t she?” Isabella glances at Jane for confirmation and Jane nods solemnly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nile’s gone, Izzy,” Jane murmurs. “She’s been gone a long time.” And Nile’s heart breaks a little to hear the pain in Jane’s voice. To hear trauma that she’s been harboring herself for so very long, only to realize that she’s not the only one that’s haunted by the night she died her first death. She wants to reach out to Jane, to hold her close and tell her that there was nothing Jane could have done. That dying then was the best thing that could have happened to any of them. In the end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She does nothing. She’s frozen still. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it’s Yusuf who says: “Would you like to sit?” and it’s Yusuf who arranges for the chairs from Isabella and Jane’s table to be brought to Yusuf and Nile’s. It’s Yusuf who delicately asks them about their long lost friend. Who steers the conversation away from the bloody and gruesome days of the past, and instead to all the events that happened after Nile and her family were murdered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Nile finds the words to speak. She asks questions of her own. “Did you ever marry that boy she’d been teasing you about?” and she gets to watch Isabella blush so dark and twiddle her ring. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Been married almost forty-five years now,” Isabella tells her, still just as shy and embarrassed to be called out on the love that she’d borne for a penniless mulatto boy who promised to give her the stars. Tears press at Nile’s eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you,” she says. Isabella starts to cry as well. She takes Nile’s hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look so much like our friend. She was such a good person. She deserved to be happy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am happy,” Nile says, wincing when she realizes how awful that must sound to Isabella. To be taking the place of someone Isabella thought was dead. But Isabella seems to take it as something else. As if, the doppelgänger bearing Nile’s face’s happiness is just enough for her. She squeezes Nile’s hand. Her wrinkled flesh— perfect and sweet against Nile’s skin. “Are you happy?” Nile ask them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jane replies. “We’ve lived a long life...but a good one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were worried after the war,” Isabella admits. “When Nile died...we were sure...we were </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that things would be bad. That there was no way that we would be allowed to live the life we wanted to.” She glances at Jane, and Jane ducks her head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We thought there’d be more bloodshed and—” the waiter arrives with drinks for them all. He even brought the meals meant for Isabella and Jane’s table to Yusuf and Nile’s as well so they could all eat together. He smiles and asks if there’s anything else she can get for them, and they politely say no. He leaves and Jane watches him go. “We never thought a white person would </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever </span>
  </em>
  <span>serve </span>
  <em>
    <span>us.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile glances at Yusuf. He grins so beautifully that she suspects she understands what Nicolo sees in him at long last. “It’s turned out better than any of us could have hoped,” Nile says. Isabella and Jane toast to that. And a fragile piece of Nile’s heart that she hadn’t even been aware of, grows stronger under the knowledge that her friends made it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re okay. They’re happy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of this was worth it. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The ghost story at the Maxwell House went like this: A southern belle (</span>
  <em>
    <span>“Really, Andromache? You?”) </span>
  </em>
  <span>was the target of two brothers. Both were in love with her. (</span>
  <em>
    <span>“Brothers?” “We had an adventurous father.” “Clearly.”) </span>
  </em>
  <span>Eventually, one of the brothers caught the other in a compromising position with the other. (</span>
  <em>
    <span>“Which one?” “It doesn’t really matter does it?” “I’m curious.” “Yusuf was trying to fix Andy’s broken buckle on her shoe. He was knelt a little too close to her skirts.”) </span>
  </em>
  <span>So the other brother killed both of them in a jealous rage. (</span>
  <em>
    <span>“I honestly have no idea why they thought that.”) </span>
  </em>
  <span>When he was trying to move the bodies, the staircase collapsed and he perished. All three still haunt the Maxwell House to this day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile listens to the story with definite interest. She tries to imagine Andromache all dolled up in skirts and laces. It doesn’t quite work. Andromache’s hair has been short since Nile’s met her, and she’s always preferred male attire. “Did you start dressing like this because of the staircase?” she asks curiously. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was one of the ways we managed to get out of the city, yes.” Andromache sighs. “I prefer this either way, though.” Nile doesn’t press for more. She sits thoughtfully at the table in their borrowed rooms. Their notes are spread out and their idea swirling through her mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The hotel isn’t finished yet,” Yusuf says. “It’s probably only letting a few rooms at a time.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Which means that the only people that will be using it are our targets,” Nile muses. They’d successfully avoided killing most members of the KKK who were less violent and only interested in terrorizing the population they deemed </span>
  <em>
    <span>less than. </span>
  </em>
  <span>But these people...the ones in charge. The ones who are gathering to claim Forrest as their leader and who have plans of expanding into so many different states. The ones who, if Nile’s intel is correct, have been talking about murdering state senators who get in their way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>These people are different. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This</span>
  </em>
  <span> will be different. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s made mostly of wood,” Nicolo murmurs. “It wouldn’t be hard to burn.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do we keep them from leaving, then?” Nile asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Forrest likes a good drink. They’ll be celebrating his acceptance,” Andromache replies. “I know something that can work.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They travel to Nashville that night. Nile collects all of her notes and research. All of the information that servants and porters and everyone that these </span>
  <em>
    <span>people </span>
  </em>
  <span>thought were dull and foolish gave her, leading to this charge. For hundreds of years enslaved persons knew codes and secrets and paths. For hundreds of years they trusted one another, and they spoke to each other of the things that they knew. And now, Nile holds their trust in her hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She won’t let it go to waste. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s easy to sneak into the Maxwell House. With more than half of it still in a lousy state of half-construction, they get inside and set up their base of operations. Nicolo and Yusuf play act just the way those wicked children did in Pulaski. They oooh and aaah and they bang on wood and shout horrible re-enactments of their supposed tragic love affair gone wrong. (Once, Andromache rolls her eyes and allows them to pull her into their game. She issues a truly melodramatic speech that has Nile clasping her hands over her mouth to keep from laughing. Andromache never does it again, but she gets a twinkle in her eye when the conversation is brought up. She winks at Nile and Nile falls to giggles every time). It terrifies the remaining guests into fleeing and sets the staff on edge. They become jumpy, uncertain, and unwilling to investigate deeper into the blocked off area where construction was set to recommence as soon as the funds allowed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile watches the movements of the cracks in the walls and ceilings of the Maxwell House. She takes note of each member of the grotesquely named Klan enter the building. She memorizes the way that the staff jumps at each creaking floorboard and each unknown murmur. It’s cruel, but she gets a thrill of delight watching them panic and sputter. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They deserve it. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>While Andromache’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>boys </span>
  </em>
  <span>frighten the staff from the kitchen, Andromache slips a poison in the wine. Nicolo and Yusuf are fully immersed in their roles as jealous lovers and have perfected the nature of their despair so cunningly than Nile would half suspect they were truly at odds with one another, had it not been for the way that they lay shoulder to shoulder on the dusty floorboards of the Maxwell House, bellowing their displeasure while trading increasingly delighted expressions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only once did someone ever become brave enough to try to see if there were trespassers there. This too, they’d planned for. The Klansmen enjoyed dressing up and pretending to be dead Confederate soldiers, and replicating their actions to instill fear was hardly beyond their capability. Nicolo was their choice of actor, and he studiously applied fruit juices and powder to his body each day, donning the uniform that he wore when he’d apparently died on the staircase, so that he could confront anyone who dared to approach their hideout. He walked toward the poor soul who had been selected to hunt for the ‘ghosts’ - moaning and weeping for his deeds. The fellow ran screaming, piss staining the floor as he left, and Nile needed to clasp her hands over her mouth to keep from laughing at the sight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows first hand what kind of trauma these terrors can do to a family, but when she searches her consciousness, she finds no guilt. She finds no despair. The staff will not be harmed, and they’ll be free to leave once the fire starts. But until then, they need to keep working. And the working never stops. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seems whenever one person takes a break, another slips effortlessly into their spot. Starting a fire isn’t the hard part. Ensuring that every member of this group dies, and that no one, at least tangentially, innocent dies is the more difficult part of the arrangement. Nile gets a job working as a maid at the Maxwell House. She interacts publicly with the people that are going to host this event. She’s sent to clean and fetch and carry, and all the while she memorizes door knobs and locks. She looks for cracks in the foundation and places where accidents could just...happen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time the day arrives where each member of the Klan’s leadership enters the House, she feels like she could walk through the building with her eyes closed. She’s collected for herself the kind of information that she needs to feel comfortable with this plot, and a sense of calm overcomes her as she watches the group assemble. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Forrest and the Joneses, Lester and Crowe, Kennedy, Reed, and McCord. All the founders and even those who were starting to branch out into other counties and states. Even those from South Carolina, where Billy Maddock told Sally Turner who told Nile that there’d been talk of eliminating senators who were pushing reconstruction a bit too much for the South’s liking. Nile listened to all of this with the kind of disappointed hatred that shifts to perfect calm. The kind of acceptance that people don’t really change unless they’re forced to. She intends to force them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Klansmen gather and toast to their decisions. They use words like Grand Wizards, and Grand Dragons, and Grand Cyclopses. Andromache in particular doesn’t care for that kind of language. She scoffs and rolls her eyes when she hears it. “They don’t seem to realize that they’re the monsters of the story. Or maybe they do,” she muses in the end. “Maybe they know full well they’re the monsters, and they like the idea that they can be monstrous.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile can’t help but think of Quynh, poor Quynh who was accused of being a witch and was thrown into the ocean never to see the sky again. Whose freedom in the waves is a twisted mockery of what freedom is meant to be. Who still needs saving. One day. One day. One day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quynh was the monster of a story once, though she never should have been considered such. She was called a witch. And she was killed. If killing monsters is what the world needs, then Nile will do everything in her power to make sure the right monsters are destroyed. The world doesn’t need monsters who prey on those who can’t defend themselves. The world needs peace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peace comes at a cost. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“We fight for what we think is right.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do you know what you think is right, is <em>actually</em> right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sometimes we’re wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not wrong about this.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No...no I don’t think you are.” </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The French man’s name is Sebastien Le Livre. He’s a forger and an art thief, but more importantly he’s a hacker and he likes stealing money from people who have far too much of it and donating that money to charitable causes. Nile thinks he’s adorable and leans toward Nicky to tell him that Sebastien is far nicer than she ever was. He’s never killed anyone, to start with. Even after he woke up, panicked at waking up, and made a quick exit back to his house, he somehow avoided killing a single person on the way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks at them with a kind of blank eyed stare when they try to explain what it is they do with their lives. What they’re drawn to do. As they sit in his living room, Nile glances over to the photos that line his walls. The pictures of his family: a beautiful black woman with long curls extending outwards like the most holy of halos. She looks serene as she leans her body fully against Sebastien's. She’s wearing a gorgeous white dress and it makes the dark for her skin only that much more alluring. Sebastien, covered in tattoos and rings and piercings, is smiling at her like she’s the sun in the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re French. Things are different here than they ever were in America, but the union still makes Nile smile. Makes her think that perhaps they really did make a difference. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Especially when the three boys come running in from school, dropping their bags on the floor and rushing to get snacks from the kitchen while Sebastien chases after them barking orders for them to wipe their feet off and no don’t touch that cake it’s for their mother. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile leans back in her chair, more at peace than she ever thought she could be. This is good. This is right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was worth it. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The spiked drinks makes everyone pass out. Nile confirms that they’re unconscious, then sets about to adding more alcohol to the room. More signs of intoxication. She moves clothes here or there, she adjusts positions. Nicolo and Yusuf begin amplifying their earlier performances. Andromache starts to scream as she throws pictures off the walls and crashes them down staircases. The staff panics, and some start to leave the hotel. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, Nile tips the lantern in the room filled with men who want to see anyone who looks like </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> under their boot for the rest of their lives. She watches as the flame lands on the alcohol that had been spilled, ready for its light. The fire dances across the room. Smoke rises. Their clothing catches. No one wakes. No one stirs. Nile backs out of the way, and disappears without a single person noticing she’d been there to begin with. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Panicked civilians watch in the street as the Maxwell House burns. Andromache, Nicolo, Yusuf, and Nile watch from the back. All the staff survives the blaze, having fled from the ghost’s fervent instructions to LEAVE THIS PLACE. GET OUT. GET OUT NOW. NONE WHO ARE INNOCENT OR PURE WILL DIE. ONLY THOSE WICKED AND CORRUPT. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The staff tells their story to the local paper and the paper writes about the tragedy. How the dead of the war had condemned the Maxwell House. How the fine people who died had all been involved in...shady dealings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And they weren’t done yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’d take 15 years of maneuvering and management. But this...this was a start. A very good start. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And as the fire blazed on, Nicolo turned to her and asked in his dignified and sweet voice: what’s next? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d stood by her so far, they believed in her cause. They’d helped without protest. Perhaps Nicolo was right. Perhaps they could be family. One day. Some day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The southern reconstruction is considered a great success. Statues and monuments are made to honor the statesmen who managed the unprecedented upheaval of social and political challenges needed to bring the nation together. Once, well more than once, someone attempted to honor the generals who led the South through the civil war. Whenever word went out that such things were in discussion, it didn’t take much to change the artist’s mind. To alter the flow of conversation. To discuss the way that the south has improved after the war, rather than to honor their attempts at holding on to slavery. Their attempts to secede from the union. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Within only a few years from the war, black and white students are in school together. Their parents are working side by side. The tension is thick, palpable, there’s grumbling...but it never grows more than that. It never is allowed to grow more than that. Nile keeps an eye on every part of America. On every part of the world that she’s helped to build. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her name will not go down in history, and she’s all right with that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t need to be remembered by anyone. She can live the rest of her very long life, seeing the impact that she made. Feeling the sway of it upon her skin. Embracing the smell of it as she walks through the street and breathes in the scent of summer air without the smoke and hell of terror and despair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile holds onto her mother’s necklace and she grins, unabashed and unconcerned, as she sits on a park bench and waits for a bus. Nicolo sits beside her, and no one looks their way or bats an eye. This is a normal turn of events now. It makes her smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve never stayed in one place for so long,” Nicolo tells her. She tilts her head towards him, considering. Waiting, because she knows that sometimes he needs time to speak. Sometimes, it takes him a while to put his thoughts into words. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, when she’s attended university for the thrill of it, she’ll consider that Nicolo speaks like he’s writing an essay. Thesis point, evidence, conclusion. He keeps his thoughts organized and his arguments succinct. She waits him out, because even with succinct arguments it takes him awhile to physically speak the argument itself. But when he does, there is no doubt to his motivations, desires, or intentions. He doesn't obfuscate. He's always there, willing to state his opinion and do it on his own terms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s always been dangerous, that someone might know who and what we are. We do missions, one thing here, one thing there. Saving lives and protecting people that need it. This...this is the first time that we’ve restructured everything to our design. Where we’ve played...influence, not necessarily through death and violence, but through helping the community grow.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We needed to do the fire because the influence </span>
  <em>
    <span>those </span>
  </em>
  <span>people had was--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Nicolo says. He has no judgment. No concern. He takes her hand. She lets him. It’s not as awkward as it once was, years ago when they first met. When he breached her personal space and she wasn’t sure what to do with this man who for all intents and purposes was everything she was meant to fear and avoid. “But we haven’t killed like that since. It has been nice, to not kill like that. To instead...help. To build a world. I have liked it. This.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re doing good things,” Nile murmurs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nicolo smiles and brings her knuckles to his lips. He kisses her hand. When the bus comes, they board it and sit at the first available seat - right behind the driver. They talk about their future as they ride. It seems like it could be a lovely one. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Nile’s little brother has a beautiful smile. He grins with his teeth, lips pulled back and eyes glittering like precious gems. He giggles high in his nose, and when he dances with Nile in the backyard of their home, he doesn’t even step on her toes. It’s their mother’s birthday tonight. Their parents are dancing their own kind of dance while the Jones family plays music on their handmade instruments. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jane got a tear in her hose earlier that evening. She wept huge tears as Isabella told her to hold still. It’d been Nile’s job to keep folks distracted from the impromptu stitching session happening in the back corner of her mother’s kitchen, and Nile thinks that she’s done her job quite admirably considering Jane kept yelping every time Isabella’s needle slipped and poked her in the thigh. They’d tried telling Jane to just take them off it’d go faster, but she’d refused to be parted from them. Nile half thinks that she deserves each poke she gets for the extra trouble. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile’s brother is taller than she is, even if she is three years older. He easily lifts her hands to spin her properly and she laughs a bit too loud to hide Jane’s latest yelp. The crowd is clapping and cheering. It’s a beautiful night, filled with the smells of home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the song ends, applause goes up and conversation starts to fill the air. Nile gives her brother a little push when he waggles his brows at her. They go and find something to drink, flopping side by side as ungainly siblings are wont to do. She leans against his arm. “It’s a good night,” she says, sighing up at the crisp autumn sky. It’s not too cool yet for their revelries to be chased in doors. It’s probably going to be one of the last few warm days of the years. She tucks her shawl a bit more comfortably around her body and he drapes an arm around her shoulders like a good brother aught to do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is a good night,” he says. He smiles that perfect smile, all teeth and lips and glittering eyes. He squeezes her a little closer. A shooting star flies overhead. They watch it skitter across the heavens, glowing like fire over a deep black sea. “Make a wish.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish I could be with my family forever,” Nile thinks but doesn’t say. She repeats it a few more times in her mind, solidifying it into existence. After a few moments, her brother gives her shoulder a squeeze. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’d you wish for?” he asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She grins through her teeth, eyes glittering like diamonds in the night. “For you to grow out of your two left feet.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gasps, feigns hurt, then drags her out to the yard for another spin. Jane and Isabella finally emerge from the kitchen, hose intact. Nile waves at them, and they wave back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The war hasn’t started, and forever feels so very far away. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Sebastien’s youngest son, Jean Pierre, has a collection of children's books in his bedroom. Nile scans through the titles absently. She stops when she sees a book of American legends. Slowly, she draws it from the shelf and looks at the cover. There’s a black woman there, striding out from a fire with her head held high. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nile flips to the story in question. She’s heard it before, but even so, it’s a tale that she likes to read over and over again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It tells the story of an unknown black woman in the post-war American south. She appeared all through the south, for decades. Haunting legislators and terrifying evil-doers. She was the conscious of the south, reminding them that justice was coming. That it would never let anyone sleep, for fear that she might come to set them straight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They called her the Broken Circle, because they said at the Maxwell House in 1867, she rallied the ghosts of the past to burn the Ku Klux Klan to the ground. An eye witness saw her, emerging from the flames, hair alight and eyes peering out into the world. “She’ll protect us,” little Abigail Ray said back then. “She’ll keep us safe.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Nile always has. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Nile always will.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And at the turn of the new millennium, with Sebastien's stolen wealth and tech-savvy understanding of the world, they find Quynh in the ocean. Everyone is free. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My artist unfortunately was not able to participate last minute, so if anyone wants to add to this for the Big Bang as a pitch hitter I'd be grateful!</p><p>Find me on tumblr: falcon-fox-and-coyote.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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